“How much does gaming benefit you?” It’s one of the questions we start asking our in our weekly gamer of the week interviews. So far we have a wide variety of stories being shared: Raijinshi used games to escape reality and have a break, H.Haunters got affected badly from too much gaming but found a way to rebounce back. This week is no exception.
Adzrul “Pyroful” Shahkiz is our featured gamer of the week. He’s a huge fan of MOBAs in general, whether it’s playing competitively or casual. His first introduction to games come from a visit to the good old internet cafes, which a friend invited him to. It was when he was nine years old and the first game he got into was the popular Ragnarok Online.
He then received his first computer a few months after that visit. “It all went down from that day I addicted to play games,” Adzrul admitted. Yet careful management of time and a good balance of gaming and study time has kept him from succumbing to serious issues. “So far so good!”
Right now, Adzrul serves as one of the ambassadors for Fundeavour. Being an ambassador, he serves to facilitate users there should problems arise. If there’s anything you need over there, just give him a holler. He also works closely with the main Fundeavour team- which he collectively address as his “big boss”- in background operations.
So Many MOBAs
As mentioned earlier, Adzrul is certainly invested with MOBAs. He was there when Dota was still a Warcraft III mod. He then tried out League Of Legends back in 2009 when it was still in beta and for the most part, remains his go-to game.
Especially now that MOBAs are huge, and remains one of the biggest e-sports scene we have. Dota 2’s major event The International keeps on breaking records in terms of prize pool size, while Riot’s League Of Legends remains the forefront of a proper competition circuit with the LCS and its regional equivalent.
He’s open to other MOBAs as well. When asked about other games of the genre, Adzrul has fair opinions of newer games, in particular the two that’s for mobile: Mobile Legends and VainGlory. “Both are pretty good and has it own unique kind of style in my opinion.” Though he prefers Mobile Legends more if compared both games side to side.
Of Gaming Benefits And Malaysia’s Booming e-Sports Scene
Gaming has let to plenty of opportunities for Adzrul, both for personal growth and career potential. He may not seem as confident with his English just yet but he has certainly getting better. (From our interview session, we can confirm his English is pretty okay! Grammar problems, sure, but getting points across should be the main priority and Adzrul managed to do just that)
Adzrul is also more confident when he’s around people.“In real life, I’m quite a shy person and not easily communicate with strangers,” he said. “ But with my involvement in the gaming scene, it changed a lot.
“And I am truly grateful for that.”
The opportunity to work with Fundeavour has opened up his social circle as well. “(Gaming) made me met a lot of new friends and my current big boss, Lylia,Nih, and Ravenost.”
Seeing the e-sports scene grow, in particular the CS:GO scene here has motivated Adzrul to keep getting better at games. He watched some of the local tournaments and and is happy to see the e-sports scene here in general is rapidly growing. In another example, he mentioned Malaysian Dota 2 star MidOne, formerly of Fnatic and now playing for Europe’s Team Secret, just entered the 9000 MMR club (for context: that’s a huge number of online wins- less than 50 people are currently of that rank, and MidOne is holding the highest MMR points in the world at the time of writing).
“We have quite a lot of pontential pro player that can make our nation proud someday,” he mentioned. Many of the success stories of Malaysian e-sports has kept his passion for gaming running that’s leading him to various opportunities.
Toxicity and The Other Side Of Brand Deals
Since Adzrul has invested a lot in MOBAs, his answer to what issues he find troubling right now: toxicity. Previous Gamer Of the Week Tohka faced this issue head-on. As for Adzrul, he sees this as a more intricate problem.
“The solution for this problem is many, but none really effective,” he said.” It is still depending on individual attitude. In order to change and make our local scene much more friendly and healthy, we need to spread on the love of our passion to them.”
Adzrul is also a bit reserved when it comes to brand involvement with the gaming scene. “There are pros and cons. The pros: people are getting well funded and sponsored. The cons: they will manipulating things around which is very unhealthy.”
He just stops right before he would name any names- but he provides a hypothetical example of what he means, something he has experienced that indeed happened here.
” For example, let say that a certain brand acquire a spot or opportunity to involve in e-sports for a long term. They might turn things around and make the tourney less interesting, but people still watch it because they love the game.”
Basically, he warns of brands that don’t know how to handle things take the control of events, dropping the overall event quality down.
The Dream
Adzrul has quite the ambition. First he has a childhood dream: “To become known and travel around meeting new fellow gamers in the worlds!” he mentioned. In the near future, he is striving to be a gamer and streamer that promotes healthy gaming lifestyle.
And lastly, he wanted to dabble with the prospect of owning a team. Starting a proper gaming team is no easy task, so we asked: what make a good e-sports team? ” From my point of view, a good team must have a very good discipline and attitude,” he said. “Without those two, a good chemistry between team members wont exist.”
“If a good team is created, a lot of sponsorship will come towards them.”
We wish all the best of Adzrul with his current and future endeavours! You can find him currently all over Fundeavour.
This feature was written as part of a partnership with Fundeavour, a site that helps aspiring gamers around the world to get a head start on beginning their journey as content creators, streamers and eSports players. Want to be featured and share your stories with over 50,000 readers? Check out more info here or sign up with Fundeavour.com!